


A Brief Biography of Harleen Quinzel

by VioletDarkbloom



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:50:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1543208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletDarkbloom/pseuds/VioletDarkbloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of life was making decisions.  There had been hard decisions from early on, and she knew that there were times when she chose wrong.  There were things she gave up and then missed, and things she pursued and then didn’t enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brief Biography of Harleen Quinzel

A lot of life was making decisions. There had been hard decisions from early on, and she knew that there were times when she chose wrong. There were things she gave up and then missed, and things she pursued and then didn’t enjoy.  
  
She’d loved gymnastics. She wanted to be in Cirque, and she practiced her ass off and was _good_ , even, but she decided to give it up. She had good reasons. She was too smart, for one thing. Everyone said so. It wasn’t just her grades, either. She could think, deep and clear and complex and full of connections. She was supposed to become a doctor, not an acrobat. Everyone said so.  
  
And she wasn’t supposed to be so pretty. That was the other reason she put away her leotard. She’d been a thick-legged, rounded little girl, and then there had been an amazing moment of litheness in seventh grade when she really started mastering complex aerials, but then she turned thirteen and these boobs came in heavy and smooth and high. They bounced when she bounced, and they popped out when she flipped, and the other girls called her a slut even though breast size has nothing to do with anything.  
  
Caitlinn Bishop had big tits, too—tiggle bitties, they called them—but no one called her a slut. “That’s because she’s ugly,” said her foster mother. This was meant to be supportive, and maybe that factors into who she grew up to be, but not as much as you might think.  
  
Everything came down to decisions.  
  
In high school, she really was a slut. It wasn’t peer pressure or daddy issues, though of course she’d never met her real father. But her foster daddy was just fine. He was affectionate in the way a father should be affectionate, and while he obviously preferred his biological children to her, her foster siblings were both boys and thus didn’t really function as direct competition.  
  
Harleen Quinzel wasn’t a slut because she was damaged. She was a slut because it made her happy.  
  
When she realized that people thought her sluttiness was a response and not a decision, Harleen decided to dye her hair to show that she knew she was playing a role. Her foster mother helped her do it in the kitchen sink, and a neighbor maintained her roots for her all the way through undergrad. Being a blonde felt right. That had been a good decision.  
  
Then Harleen had been a slanted stereotype, a slutty blonde who got perfect grades. She wore a plaid miniskirt to the SAT, and she got a nearly perfect score. She was accepted into several Ivy Leagues but chose a local school to stay close to her boyfriend, a townie who was nearly twice her age and slapped her around when he drank. And that was a decision, too. She never thought she deserved it, exactly. It was more like she was being safe by picking someone so flawed, because someone _better_ might notice something funny about her. There were funny things about her that she didn’t want noticed. Funny decisions she’d made in the past that she found herself unable to regret.  
  
There had been a gymnastics teacher who had made some comments about the way her boobs behaved. He’d been an impolite man, a harsh man, but not a cruel man. The comments were almost certainly not meant to humiliate her in the way she’d been humiliated. Even at the time, she’d understood that this man didn’t remember how hard it was to be 13.  
  
But then his house burned down. He survived and everything, but everyone felt really bad. Harleen drew hearts around her name when she signed the enormous card she and her friends made for him. The hearts were red and orange and yellow. Harleen added a couple tiny blue hearts at the end.  
  
A boyfriend who didn’t hit her might see the part of her that had giggled as she made hearts that looked like the flames she’d made only two nights before.  
  
The townie got another girl pregnant, so Harleen transferred her attentions to the literature professor who first made her read Chekov’s “The Darling.” The story gave her the idea. She came by at office hours and claimed to be considering a new major. “Literature is just so much more _real_ than organic chemistry,” Harleen had purred.  
  
Which was funny because she hadn’t really had to study any literature after that.  
  
The professor liked to call Harleen in the middle of the night and insist that she reassure him over and over about how much she loved him. She hated doing it, but a boyfriend who wasn’t so insecure and controlling might see the part of her that lit up at the memorial for Hannah Stigh, the sorority sister who once called Harleen trashy and then later swallowed a bottle of Vicodin with vanilla flavored vodka.  
Harleen really hadn’t had anything to do with that, she was just pleased as punch that it happened.  
  
By med school, Harleen was bored with being smart, so instead of using her brain to excel academically, she used her brain to unravel her professors. There would be a time, however brief, when she would regret that decision.  
  
Unraveling people was fun, so she decided on psychiatry as her specialization. Being a psychiatrist wouldn’t be as fun as being a med student, though, because the unraveling would have to be accomplished without her favorite tool.  
  
Her favorite tool was sex.  
  
Like seriously, she really liked sex.  
  
Harleen decided to accept the most prestigious job offered to her after she finished her MD program. She decided to wear glasses and a bun to work not because she thought it made her look smart but because she knew it made her look like a fantasy. Because she had nothing better to do, and because she knew she was brilliant and beautiful, Dr. Harleen Quinzel decided to unravel the most complex patient at Arkham Asylum.  
  
And then she met the bastard. And right away she knew that the funny part of her, the part that started fires and giggled during funerals, was mirrored in this man who everyone knew was evil. This man that killed for fun and caused chaos wherever he went, who did not even have a real name, _holy shit_ , he was just like her. Just like she could decide to be.  
  
She was aware of the progress he made toward seeing inside of her. She watched him find her funny parts, and she watched him hide his delight. She watched him play her, and she watched herself really and truly get played.  
  
Dr. Quinzel sat cross-legged by her bed one night drawing curly J’s in red ink on her inner thigh, and shimmied her mind through each big decision that had brought her to this moment. None of them, she decided, had been stupid. She’d only ever made one mistake. It was just that she made it over and over again.  
  
All her life, she’d played roles. She’d been a slut and a seductress, a genius and a gymnast. She’d never once just been _Harleen Quinzel, sane human_.  
  
The mistake she’d made was that she had assumed, up until now, that there was a _Harleen Quinzel, sane human_ somewhere under there. She’d been thinking of herself as a basically normal person who sometimes made crazy decisions, and that was all wrong. It made her giddy, realizing it. All along, she’d really been a crazy person who sometimes made normal decisions! No wonder she’d never been happy! She’d been living a big fat lie!  
  
And the boyfriend who beat her? This was a big breakthrough: it wasn’t that she needed someone flawed, it was that she needed someone _bad._  
  
Harleen dug the pen harder and harder into her thigh, until finally just a little blood mixed in with the ink. The blood, Harleen thought, was a much prettier shade of red. She smeared it with her finger and made the best decision of her entire life:  
  
She decided to go mad.

  


Sometimes, when J was too rough (and “too rough” in his case meant multiple broken bones), or too distant, or even just for a moment a bit too immature about the dumb Bat, Harley would find herself constructing an aerial view of her life, analyzing data in order to make a decision. And then, blissfully, she would remember: she’d already made one. Whatever the situation, the decision was the same: Harley Quinn had decided to be mad for life.

**Author's Note:**

> My non-fannish writing (which is still quite a lot about Sherlock Holmes) can be found at butlikesowhat.wordpress.com
> 
> In one of the comics (and I forget which one and can't check because I've left it in the US with my mother and a place that was once my bedroom), they say that Harleen slept her way through med school not because she was dumb but because she felt like it, and she's actually a genius. She does v smart things in Sirens, and there's that great Valentine's Day piece in maybe one of the HQ comics where she outsmarts people and is adorable at the same time. I find dumb characters boring, and I like to make my female characters into versions of me because I'm narcissistic like that. Actual canon characterisation of her is completely inconsistent, and don't get me started on the Arkham video game version. Although damn are those some great games. But anyway what I'm saying is I made all of this up and none of it's canon, if you were curious.


End file.
